"Nothing," said Chatteris, "absolutely nothing." And the valet, finding this answer quite satisfactory, wished him goodnight and departed. Probably Chatteris remained in this attitude for a considerable time--half an hour, perhaps, or more. Slowly, it would seem, his mood underwent a change. At some definite moment it must have been that his lethargic meditation gave way to a strange activity, to a sort of hysterical reaction against all his resolves and renunciations. His first action seems to me grotesque--and grotesquely pathetic. He went into his dressing-room, and in the morning "his clo'es," said the valet, "was shied about as though 'e'd lost a ticket." This poor worshipper of beauty and the dream shaved! He shaved and washed and he brushed his hair, and, his valet testifies, one of the brushes got "shied" behind the bed. Even this throwing about of brushes seems to me to have done little or nothing to palliate his poor human preoccupation with the toilette. He changed his gray flannels--which suited him very well--for his white ones, which suited him extremely. He must deliberately and conscientiously have made himself quite "lovely," as a schoolgirl would have put it. And having capped his great "renunciation" by these proceedings, he seems to have gone straight to Lummidge's Private and Family Hotel and demanded to see the Sea Lady. She had retired. This came from Parker, and was delivered in a chilling manner by the hall-porter. Chatteris swore at the hall-porter. "Tell her I'm here," he said. "She's retired," said the hall-porter with official severity. "Will you tell her I'm here?" said Chatteris, suddenly white. "What name, sir?" said the hall-porter, in order, as he explains, "to avoid a frackass." "Chatteris. Tell her I must see her now. Do you hear, _now_?" The hall-porter went to Parker, and came half-way back. He wished to goodness he was not a hall-porter. The manager had gone out--it was a stagnant hour. He decided to try Parker again; he raised his voice. The Sea Lady called to Parker from the inner room. There was an interval of tension. I gather that the Sea Lady put on a loose wrap, and the faithful Parker either carried her or sufficiently helped her from her bedroom to the couch in the little sitting-room. In the meanwhile the hall-porter hovered on the stairs, praying for the manager--prayers that went unanswered--and Chatteris fumed below. Then we have a glimpse of the Sea Lady. "I see her just in the crack of the door," said the porter, "as that maid of hers opened it. She was raised up on her hands, and turned so towards the door. Looking exactly like this----" And the hall-porter, who has an Irish type of face, a short nose, long upper lip, and all the rest of it, and who has also neglected his dentist, projected his face suddenly, opened his eyes very wide, and slowly curved his mouth into a fixed smile, and so remained until he judged the effect on me was complete.